Well of Darkness

by Margaret Weis

  “That’s what Dunner says.” Dagnarus winked. “I didn’t contradict him, though of course we know better. Still, when I am Lord of Battle, I will make my knights learn to fight using bow and arrow from horseback. I plan to start right away. Training for it, that is. Dunner says I must learn to ride using the strength of my legs alone to hold me in the saddle. That frees my hands to hold the bow.”

  Gareth regarded his friend in admiration and awe. “Do you dare?”

  “Well, of course!” Dagnarus said, adding casually, “I tried it today. Not on my horse, he’s not broken yet, but on one of the stable ponies. I fell off six times, but Dunner says that I have a knack for it, and I’ll soon improve. I stayed on a whole three minutes the last time.”

  Gareth could only shake his head. He was preoccupied, still fretting. “Evaristo says that there won’t be a war. Your father convinced the elven ambassador to stay and keep talking.”

  “Evaristo is behind on his court gossip,” said Dagnarus dryly. “It is not only the elves who are threatening to go to war now; it is the dwarves and the orken as well.”

  “What?” Gareth was appalled. “When? How did that happen?”

  “It seems that someone—no one knows who—sent anonymous messages to both the dwarven ambassador and the orken, telling them that the King was granting concessions to the elves in return for the elves aiding Vinnengael in a war against the dwarves and orken. A dwarven army now camps outside their end of the Portal, threatening to seize it. We have sent soldiers to hold it open. The orken rioted in the streets of Vinnengael today. Didn’t you hear about that?”

  “No. I didn’t hear anything,” said Gareth miserably.

  “If you would take your nose out of a book now and then, you might smell something,” said Dagnarus. He glanced around. “More stew, Silwyth. I’m starving.”

  Silently, the elf glided forward from his accustomed place, which was always as near to a window as he could manage. He ladled stew from the pot and placed the bowl in front of the prince.

  Gareth sighed. It was all very well for the prince to skip his lessons, run off to talk to Unhorsed dwarves, and gallop about on ponies. The whipping boy did not have that luxury. Gareth said nothing however. Dagnarus would never understand.

  Silwyth, his task done, faded back to take up his watchful stance by the window.

  “The soldiers quelled the riot,” the prince was saying. “But not without a few cracked heads—that’s what Argot said. The soldiers are patrolling the town. And we’ve sealed off our end of the Portals. Argot says he doesn’t want to wake up to find an army of orken and dwarves come thundering through.”

  “Is your father going to join with the elves and go to war?” Gareth asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You know my father.” Dagnarus snorted. “He would never do such a thing. Though it is an interesting idea…” He paused, musing, while he chewed on a mouthful of lamb.

  “But if we know that your father, the King, wouldn’t do anything so underhanded, then surely the dwarves and the orken must know the same thing,” Gareth said, after a moment’s thought.

  “The well-fed dog eats tamely from one’s hand,” observed Silwyth suddenly from the window. “The starving dog will bite off that hand. That is an elven saying.”

  “What does he mean?” Gareth asked in a whisper. “Is he calling your father a starving dog?”

  “Who knows?” Dagnarus returned. He hadn’t been paying attention. “The elves have a saying for everything.”

  “Do you really think there will be a war?” Gareth persisted, unhappily.

  “What else can my father do except go to war?” Dagnarus mopped up the rest of the stew with a bit of bread. “He cannot allow the Portals to remain closed. Trade would suffer. The merchants would be up in arms. Dunner says that the entire economy of Vinnengael might collapse and leave us as poor as Dunkarga.”

  “But it’s all a lie,” said Gareth, bewildered. “The King will just tell them that it was a lie and then they’ll understand.”

  “You don’t understand, Patch,” said Dagnarus, regarding his friend with kindly pity. “Silwyth explained it to me. They don’t want to understand.”

  The prince glanced over his shoulder at the elf. “I won’t need you anymore this afternoon, Silwyth. I’m going to stay here and play with Patch.”

  Gareth was startled; Dagnarus had not played in the playroom for several months. He almost said something, but Dagnarus—turning his head—gave his friend a wink. Gareth kept silent.

  Silwyth bowed and left the room, saying he would be back in time to assist the prince in dressing for dinner, which he was to eat with his mother that night.

  “What do you want to play?” Gareth asked, hoping to take his mind off the lunacies of the adult world.

  “Nothing,” said Dagnarus. “The King and Helmos and the other Dominion Lords are with the ambassadors right now.” He took hold of Gareth’s hand. “Come with me. I’ve found a place where we can listen to what they’re saying.”

  Gareth hung back. “Are you crazy? What if we’re caught?”

  “Pooh! They won’t do anything to me,” Dagnarus returned.

  “Not to you, but they’ll murder me!” Gareth protested.

  “No they won’t. I won’t let them. Besides, we’re not going to get caught. This is a great hiding place. Don’t be such a girl, Patch!”

  Gareth could not, of course, allow himself to be a “girl.” The enormity of daring to spy on the King made Gareth’s knees go wobbly and his insides quiver, but, upon reflection, the feeling wasn’t unpleasant. It beat spending another dreary, lonely afternoon by himself in the playroom.

  “I’ll go,” he said stoutly.

  “Good man!” said Dagnarus, pleased.

  Dunner of the Unhorsed

  The King had asked the ambassadors to meet with him one hour past the sun’s zenith. It was that time already, and the dwarf was late. Dunner did not hurry. Although known around the court as the ambassador from the dwarven nation, Dunner was not truly the ambassador. He was the advisor to the ambassador, sent to Vinnengael by Chief Clan Chief Rolf Swiftmane, nominal ruler of the dwarven clans. (Nominal because dwarves’ loyalty to their own clans takes precedence over loyalty to all the clans, and they generally agree to abide by a Chief Clan Chief’s decision only after their own clan chiefs have approved it first.)

  The true ambassador had arrived yesterday through the Portal and would leave today, perhaps immediately if war was declared. In that instance, Dunner would leave as well. He supposed he should be thankful to be returning to his homeland, and in a way he was. In another way, he wasn’t.

  Dunner limped through the castle corridors, moving slowly, his twisted limb causing him considerable pain. Rain would fall tomorrow and probably the day after, to judge by the aching, which was always worst before a storm. The dwarf did not mind being late. The dwarven ambassador—a fierce chieftain named Begaf Hoofthunder—would most assuredly be late. He would arrive at the castle sometime before sun’s downing, but just exactly when was open to question.

  Dwarves take a very relaxed view of time. They cannot understand human and elven obsession with hours and minutes. A dwarf divides a day into three parts—sun arise, sun’s zenith, sun’s downing. These events mark his days, and he observes them only because at sun arise he wakes and breaks camp, at sun’s zenith he pauses a short while to rest his horse, at sun’s downing he makes camp and sleeps. He keeps no regular mealtime. Indeed, dwarves scorn humans and elves who, the dwarves say, “look at a time piece to know when they’re hungry.” A dwarf eats when his stomach tells him to eat. As for night, what use is keeping time in the dark, when all one does is sleep?

  Dunner had been forced to learn to live by human time, mostly because that was the only way he ever got anything to eat. He had nearly starved upon first arriving at the castle. A dwarf seeking a substantial meal in midafternoon was out of luck. The cook, who was busy cleaning up after dinner and starting prepara
tions for the evening meal, refused to allow the dwarf so much as a bowl of stew. Dunner took to carrying bread and cheese in his pockets, while he trained his stomach to regulate its needs by the chiming of the castle’s time pieces, some run by water, others by magic.

  “There’s Dunner! Hello, Dunner!”

  Dunner turned his head to see the young prince, Dagnarus, and his companion, the whipping boy (another strange human concept), running through the corridor. The prince waved his hand in a friendly manner, but he did not stop. The whipping boy—Dunner did not know the child’s name—waved, too, mostly in confusion, and trailed along after his prince.

  Dunner had seen the prince take several nasty falls from his horse that very morning. Now the dwarf watched the child run with easy strides through the corridor and envied the prince his youth and resilience. A fall from his horse when he was a child had ended Dunner’s days as a rider. To be blunt, the fall, which had shattered the bones in his left leg, had ended his days as a dwarf. The break had been treated in dwarven fashion—the leg wrapped tightly in cotton bindings and left to mend on its own. During the healing time, Dunner was hauled about on a mobile litter—a piece of canvas attached to two wooden poles strapped to the back of his mother’s horse. The poles jounced over the ground, sending flashes of pain through the child with every bump.

  When the bindings were removed, the bones had knit together, but in all the wrong places, leaving Dunner with a twisted limb and the inability to ride a horse longer than a few miles at a stretch. The clan chief, having determined that Dunner would slow up the tribe, pronounced Dunner one of the Unhorsed. Dunner’s parents took the boy to the City of the Unhorsed, apprenticed him to a professional scribe—a dwarf with a broken back—who wrote messages when dwarves, most of whom are illiterate, needed to communicate with the outside world.

  Dunner never saw his parents again. The clan occasionally came to the City of the Unhorsed, but his parents never bothered to look for him, nor did he search them out. Though the Unhorsed were publicly honored for their work, in reality he was an embarrassment to his family, a shame to his clan. Had he returned to his tribe, they would have received him with aloof politeness, just as they would have received an ork, or a very well respected human.

  Dunner became much attached to the scribe, a kindly woman who had paid the orken—a race ingenious with their hands—to devise a chair on wheels, which she used to help her move around her house. The scribe was gentle with the boy during those first few lonely days when he thought he should die from missing his family and from being imprisoned in one place, never to leave. He had hoped he would die, in fact, but his body had perversely kept on living.

  In time, he learned to bear his fate, as the scribe taught him he must or end up like one of the mad dwarves. This threat impressed Dunner, for he had seen the mad dwarves on occasion and was determined never to fall into that pitiful and disgusting condition. Several of the mad dwarves lived in the City of the Unhorsed. Shunned by the other dwarves, the mad dwarves were ragged and unkempt. They survived by stealing food and living off scraps and offal. They contributed nothing to dwarven society and were therefore viewed as the most lowly of the low, even lower than convicted criminals, who at least paid for their crimes by volunteering to work in the iron mines.

  Dunner learned to bear the longing that burned in his blood every sun arise, the longing to leap on one’s pony and ride off into the new day. He learned to grit his teeth against the longing, as he gritted his teeth against the pain of his deformed leg. Neither the longing nor the pain ever left him. His heart had died within him. He would never enjoy life, but at least he could tolerate living, mainly by being useful to his people.

  His work saved him. He proved a quick student and was soon able to read and write Fringrese, the dwarven language, better than his teacher. An elderly dwarf, she looked forward to escaping her unfortunate state in death, and was glad to turn over more and more of the work to Dunner. Having learned to write Fringrese and feeling the need to try to fill the emptiness in his breast, he decided that the best way to do that was to stuff his head with knowledge. He did some scribe work for several dwarven merchants, also among the Unhorsed, who traded with the orken seafarers. Most dwarves can speak a smattering of orken, enough to deal and barter, which was all that they needed. Too often, however, Dunner saw that the deals they made weren’t very profitable, not as profitable as they could have been, mainly because they didn’t understand the orken, who have their own way of handling customers.

  Dunner began to study not only the orken language, but also orken ways. He learned, for example, that you never closed a deal with an ork on the night of a waning moon, for an ork believed that deals made in moonlight are only good for the length of time that particular moon stays around. Once the moon is gone, the ork feels perfectly free to break the deal, take back his merchandise—never mind that you have paid for it—and resell his goods during the next lunar cycle. Dunner learned to make deals with orken only under new moons, and then to sell the merchandise as quickly as possible. Either that or hide it until the orken traders set sail.

  Soon, Dunner was much in demand among the dwarven merchants, who lauded his skills and spread the word that he increased their profits. The orken preferred doing business with a dwarf who understood them, instead of one who followed them around shrieking at the top of his lungs that he’d been swindled.

  The elderly scribe eventually died, which meant that her spirit had entered the body of a wolf and would roam free forever and so Dunner could not grieve for her. Envy her, but not grieve. Shortly after he took over the business, the human king sent ambassadors into the dwarven lands to tell them about the Portals. Of course, the Chief Clan Chief of the dwarves was nowhere in the vicinity and so could not make a decision. His absence angered the humans, who had sent messages giving their scheduled date of arrival, expecting the Chief Clan Chief to meet them. That date meant nothing to the Chief Clan Chief, nothing to any of the dwarves.

  In order to placate the humans, the dwarves sent for Dunner. He would take down the information and relate it to the Chief Clan Chief sometime in the next few years, whenever he happened to drop by.

  The humans had no choice but to make do with this. Dunner had no knowledge at all of the human language but one of the humans spoke a little dwarven and another a little orken. Dunner was a quick learner and by the time the humans left, he had acquired a fair knowledge of both them and their language. He also saw how the Portals might prove to be immensely beneficial; not only would they fatten dwarven saddle-bags and fill dwarven coffers, but they would provide a simple way to fulfill dwarven destiny, which was to rule all of Loerem.

  Dunner took the matter to the dwarven merchants of the City of the Unhorsed. He urged them to agree to the building of the Portal on a strictly temporary basis, subject to the approval of the Chief Clan Chief. That way, Dunner argued, the Portal could be tested and the Chief Clan Chief provided with all the information requisite to making a decision.

  Dwarven merchants had traveled to human and elven lands prior to this, but the journey could take years and though the money made was considerable—dwarven metalwork was highly prized—the profits barely paid for the time and effort, not to mention the danger. The Portal would reduce the travel time to Vinnengael from one year to less than a sun’s cycle. The dwarves could continue to charge the same high prices for their goods, without having to incur half the expense. Profits would leap higher than young colts.

  The dwarven merchants immediately approved the building of the Portal. When the human magi arrived, Dunner was the dwarf responsible for arbitrating between them and the dwarves as to location and the hundreds of other minor quibbles that seemed likely to turn into major battles, owing to simple misunderstandings of each other’s ways. When the Portal was completed and the first dwarven wagons rolled through on their way to Vinnengael, the magi invited Dunner to come with them, to present him to King Tamaros as the dwarf who had been respons
ible for bringing this about.

  Tamaros invited Dunner to live in the castle, to help with the continued negotiations. The Unhorsed agreed that they needed one of their own in Vinnengael to deal with the unreasonable and irrational humans, and Dunner was the obvious choice. He bore this burden as he had learned to bear the others. He had not thought he could possibly grow more unhappy. He had learned differently.

  He had lived in Vinnengael for many years now, with only two rays of sunshine breaking through the prison house, which was how he viewed the castle. The first had been the Great Library. Reading of other lands and other people, learning their histories, their ways, their secrets, helped Dunner forget the pain in both his leg and his soul. The second was the young prince.

  Dunner had never been around children. The Unhorsed rarely marry, unless it is to one of themselves, and in that instance any child born to them is considered to be Unhorsed, as well. The child may attempt to return to the tribe, but will probably be rejected. Dunner was one who never married. He saw no reason to share his own great unhappiness with another equally unhappy dwarven female. He had fathered no children. No child had ever looked up to him, admired him, listened to his stories, wanted to learn from him. And then he had come across Dagnarus endeavoring to break his horse and going about it in typical human fashion.

  Watching the prince and his friend dash down the corridor, Dunner wondered what they were up to. Mischief, no doubt. It was well-known that Tamaros could not control his younger son; his mother Emillia didn’t even bother to try. The only person who seemed to be able to do anything with the prince was his elven chamberlain, a sly and sneaky bastard to Dunner’s mind, but then he had about as much use for elves as he had for horseflies. Dunner more than half suspected the elf of having sent the anonymous communiqué, which had them all teetering on the brink of war. But the dwarf could not prove his suspicions, admittedly based on nothing more than having seen the elf almost smile when he thought no one was looking. Everyone else in the court was blaming King Olgaf. To Dunner’s mind, Olgaf wasn’t smart enough to have thought this one up.